Last winter, Acadia University said it was investigating Mehta “for the manner in which you are expressing views that you are alleged to be advancing or supporting and, in some instances, time that you are spending on these issues in the classroom.” We need to parse that sentence. It appears the university says it was investigating Mehta, both for his personal views (freedom of speech) and also for what he was saying in his classroom. Did that violate his academic freedom?

I will confess I’m conflicted about the news Acadia University has fired Rick Mehta. On Friday, the university confirmed it had terminated the controversial psychology professor, effective August 31, but then refused to say why or “provide any elaboration” about what it called “a personnel matter.” Acadia also wouldn’t release the results of an investigation...

We may not like Veterans Affairs' decision to fund Christopher Garnier's PTSD treatment, but it is the right policy. And the publicity about Garnier's case may lead to better outcomes for other veterans' families.

Sometimes a right policy results in a wrong result. Most of the time — including in the case of convicted murderer/diagnosed PTSD sufferer Christopher Garnier — we are better off focusing on the right policy rather than on the occasional unexpected, unhappy wrong result of that policy. When I was a young freelance journalist, I...

Andrew Scheer’s federal Tories seem to be in full split-apart mode. The provincial Progressive Conservatives? Much will depend on their upcoming leadership convention.

Will Nova Scotia’s Progressive Conservatives pull a federal Conservative Party and stagger out of their October 27 leadership convention hopelessly divided between their regular right-wing whingers and their ultra-right-wing whiners? Could PC leadership hopeful John Lohr — he of the Northern-Pulp-protesters-were-paid, free-speech-for-fanatics, let’s-build-more-statues-to-Edward-Cornwallis, frack-yes(!) wing of the party — emerge as the leader of a...

IATSE Local 849, the union that represents most film technicians in the province, has statistics showing its members worked 40,687 days in 2014, earning $11,120,665 in gross pay and pensions. In 2017, those numbers had tumbled over a cliff: just 13,454 days worked with gross pay and pensions — $3,842,454 — 65 per cent lower than in 2014.

There is something vaguely Trumpian in Premier Stephen McNeil’s continuing, reality-be-damned insistence his government’s 2015 consultation- and logic-free decision to dump a longstanding, working-well film tax credit, then replace it with a more restrictive, less incentivizing “Nova Scotia Film and Television Incentive Fund” is all working out just fine, the way we planned it, thank...

“I want to assure you that I’ve heard you, and I’ve listened,” McNeil said of the health care crisis on election night. “We have a plan, and the opposition parties have a plan, and we can work together to make it better." So much for working together. With the opposition. Or, more importantly, with Nova Scotians.

Did you know that, as of Friday morning, the Nova Scotia Health Authority’s News website was reporting a full computer page — 10 different items — flagging current, ongoing, never-ending emergency room closures in Nova Scotia? From the Lillian Fraser Memorial in Tatamagouche, to the Eastern Shore Memorial in Sheet Harbour, to Guysborough Memorial, to […]

“Our goal, which I believe we have achieved,” Transportation Minister Geoff MacLellan said when he signed the latest ferry deal, “was to put a stable, long-term agreement in place.” How’s that working out?

I could say I told them so — and I did, way back when “them” was still Rodney Macdonald and his Tories, and from then on forward through Darrell Dexter and Stephen McNeil to whatever same-old-same-old will come next — but I’d have to stand in a too-long line behind all the other told-them-so nattering...

Americans are right to be outraged at the outrageous Russian interference in their 2016 presidential elections. They are correct to be appalled not only that their Putin-puttana-ed president continues to pretend that what happened didn’t happen, but also that their commander-in-chief and his principle-free, me-too Republican Congressional congregation refuse to act to prevent more...

The short and the small of it all is that SaltWire CEO Mark Lever is blandly, blindly traveling a well-trod path to self-immolation. Unfortunately, SaltWire’s employees — and its readers — will become collateral damage in his self-lit inferno.

“We believe being in 25 communities is a big strength… I believe telling local stories in Gander, and in St. John’s, and in Corner Brook, and Summerside, and Sydney are going to be what supports this network. Not amalgamating. Not putting the same copy in every paper.” Mark Lever, Saltwire CEO Financial Post interview July 17,...

In the past month, U.S. Customs and Border Protection stopped 21 vessels in the Gulf of Maine “looking for illegal immigrants.” Illegal immigrants? From Canada? Or should that be to Canada?

“Border disputes do not go away; they fester. And when other factors push them back to the surface — the discovery of valuable resources, an assertion of national pride, a mishap at sea — the stakes can suddenly rise to a point where easy solutions become impossible.” — John Kelly Retired US diplomat who served...

Journalism is a generalist’s game. If you have curiosity, a determination to discover the facts, even the ones that don’t match your pre-conceived notions, and a passion for telling stories, there are — and should always be — many ways to learn journalism’s specific, ever evolving skills as well as its ethics and standards. It isn’t about where you learned, but how well you learned.

My Examiner column last week seemed to set off a modest Twitter tempest, mostly because its subject, Coun. Shawn Cleary, chose to respond to what I wrote and didn’t write (even when he didn’t seem to realize I’d written it); and then to respond in scattershot kind to various readers and constituents, who had taken umbrage at...